So if you want to be a successful
colourist you've got to get your skin
tones absolutely perfect and that's going
to come with hard work, a lot of practice
and the ability to
read the scopes correctly.
So in this episode I'm going to show you
this video, it's a music video, a
Christmas music video, just signed off
yesterday and I'm going to show you how I
got my skin tones
looking absolutely gorgeous.
Now I've just discovered a new tool as
well, it's written by a colour scientist
and developer called
Stefan Ringelschwandter.
He runs a site called Mononodes.com and
I've used one of his tools in this
episode. It's a brand new tool, it's
actually been out for about three months
but I've only just discovered it.
Now that is a paid utility and I'm just
pointing it out now because if that's not
for you I'm giving you the opportunity to
switch off now and not
watch the rest of the episode.
If you're still here and you're
interested I'm going to show you exactly
how it works and you're going to love it.
So this is the actual project that I've
been working on. I just want to say thank
you to Josh Gudgeon and the team at Get
Your Media and also to Adam who is
otherwise known as Bid Meats Food.
He's got three and a half million
subscribers on YouTube and this is his
charity Christmas video that he does
every year and they've let me work on it
once again but they've
also let me show it to you.
First let me just show you some of the
scenes that are in here so you can get an
idea of what's going on.
So it's a music video, we start off
outside very cold so this is Adam as an
old man but they wanted a kind of
twilight look in it so we've got these
real blues and then we come in to our
more Christmas world.
Looking at this you can see that we've
got really nice skin tones, we've got
really nice neutral colours going on,
nice dense reds. Again it's another one
of Stephans DCTL's that I've used to get
that and I'll put a link
to that in the description.
So let's just quickly have a look in
Lightbox at what's going on. So at the
beginning we've got this nice cold vibes
going on and then all our
skin tones are nice and clean.
We've got good neutrals, nice deep reds
for that sort of Christmassy feeling,
nice and colourful but all our skin tones
are looking absolutely great.
So how do we do that? Let me show you
what's going on with colour management
first as I always do. We are in a CST
workflow so we're in
non-resolve colour management.
We're just in our regular DaVinci YRGB
here going to our timeline colour space
of DaVinci Wide Gamut and
our output Rec709 gamma 2.4.
All documented in many of my videos but
I'll put a link to the most recent one.
If you have a look at one how I build my
node tree. It shows you
exactly what I did in that.
So if I switch off all the grade, so I've
got my input CST here and my output CST
here, what I can actually do is show you
what it looks like out of the camera.
So this is out of the camera but not the
log. So I've taken it to Rec709 so you
can see how much work we had to do.
And you can see everything is very warm
in here so we just have to neutralise
that a little bit. So let
me switch the grade back on.
You can see we've got nice whites but
we've got really nice skin tones in here.
So how do I measure my skin tones and
where's the skin tone work going on?
The skin tone work most of it is going on
in my initial balance. So how do we
measure it? If I go to our vectorscope,
let's pop this out so
we get a nice big scope.
So traditionally what you can do is you
can click on this icon here. So show skin
tone indicator. Let's just pop that on
and then we get this line.
And as I've documented many times before,
this skin tone line is a fantastic guide
for putting your skin tones on. You put
skin tones on there,
they're going to look great.
So how do I know what's actually sitting
on that line? I've got a lot going on
here because it's measuring the whole
image. So there's a couple
of techniques that you can do.
So if you click on this little icon here
and say display qualifier focus, I'll
switch that on and then
choose your qualifier tool.
What that does is on the scope, you'll
get a little indicator showing you what
you're actually pointing at the moment.
So you can see there as I point to his
jumper, it points towards the red.
As we point to the little plant here, it
goes towards green. As we touch their
skin tones, we get a good indication that
we're sitting on that skin tone line.
But it's quite a broad area. It's not
that defined. So another common technique
is let's just take an empty node here.
I'm just going to draw
around the skin tone here.
And then we put our highlights on and
that isolates it and we can now see it on
the vector scope very easily. Now, if I
move that around, let's
just move over to Adam's skin.
See what that's doing. See, it's a little
bit tricky because I don't know where it
is. There it is. And again, that is
sitting nicely on the skin tone line.
If it wasn't, what I could do is leave
this on and I can adjust my offset or my
gain gamma, whatever you're working with
and get that spot on.
So then when I come out of highlight
mode, I can get rid of the window and
that adjustment on that
node has taken effect.
So what's going on here? I found this new
utility. So you're going to get this from
the mononodes.com website. And these are
the tools for DaVinci Resolve.
So Stefan's got quite a few different
DCTLs on here and there is a discount
code in the description. And this one's
the one I've used
before, Color Shift DCTLs.
You've seen me do an episode on that. I
put a link to that in the description as
well, but that's how I get that nice rich
reds on those jumpers.
You've got Hue Twist, Crosstalk, RGB
Split. And this is the one that I've got
excited about. It's the Utility DCTL.
So this has been out for a few months. I
only discovered it a couple of weeks ago
when Stefan put something up on
Instagram, but I'm glad I did.
Okay. So I've downloaded this. I've
installed it into DaVinci Resolve by
putting it into the LUTs folder.
And let me show you how it works. So
we're in clip mode at the moment. Now a
few of these clips are in
groups, but not all of them.
Okay. So if you're in group, you'll see
that if you click on here, you get group
pre-clip, clip, group
post-clip and timeline.
Okay. If you're not in a group, all you
get is clip and timeline. But timeline is
common throughout the whole program.
If I switch to timeline mode, it means
anything I do in here affects the whole
program. All right. So everything is
affected. It's not a clip level.
First thing you need to do is add a
serial note. So option S. And I'm going
to go to my effects here
and I'm going to grab a DCTL.
So that's a DaVinci color transform
language. And this is how professional
colorists and software developers like
Stefan can access the tools within
DaVinci Resolve and make
their own tools for us to use.
You're not going to believe how simple
this is. The utilities, DCTL gives you
three utilities as it were. All right. So
I'm going to scroll down here.
As I said, this just gets installed in
the LUTs folder and down the bottom. So
any with the mono are from mononodes. And
at the bottom, I've got mono balance,
mono clipping and mono isolator.
These are the three packs that you get
with the utility pack. So you get an
isolator, which allows you
to isolate particular colors.
You get a clipping tool, which shows you
when you have clipped your highlights,
for example, and you get
this thing here called balance.
So when I switch that on, we get this
sort of overlay on our image. And what
it's doing is looking at
the skin tone indicator here.
OK. And anything sitting exactly on that
line will become yellow. So we can see
here straight away that our face has gone
yellow, that it's sitting exactly on that
line, which we already know
because we've just tested that.
Anything green or magenta means that
you've shifted away from the line, either
towards magenta or towards green. By
having this tool on, it is really easy to
check your skin tones.
And this is the first job I've ever used
it on. And it's just so simple to use. So
let me go back to clip level. If we go to
our balance and exposure here, what I'm
going to do, this is why
I've copied the timeline.
I'm going to go to my offset tool here
and just show you what happens when our
skin tones are too magenta.
It would look like that. OK.
Now, if I switch the utility off, it
doesn't actually look that bad. It looks
absolutely fine. It's perfectly
acceptable to have your skin tone sitting
there if you desire.
All right. But if I put it back on, go
back to my clip level, and now all I've
got to do is just move my offset around
until they're both balanced.
And what's great with this as well is I'm
seeing two faces at the same time as
well. I'd have to draw two windows around
two separate things.
So that's good. Now, obviously, there's a
little bit of magenta still going on
here. We're talking about shadows here.
It's perfectly acceptable to have a bit
of magenta come in or indeed a bit of
green. Or in fact, you might want your
skin tones slightly towards green. That
might be how you want to work.
But what this is going to give you is
consistency. All right. Let's have a look
at it on another couple of shots. So
let's go down to, in fact, yeah, let's
get down to this guy here.
Again, we can see we've got really good
yellow going on here. And I can just
leave this on while I go
and adjust all my skin tones.
So let's just have a look at our offset.
Just check that we did get it exactly
right. So it's going a little bit green
there. Let's bring it back.
You could work with gamma or gain just to
get that exactly right. You could use the
color warper, for example, and that is
looking really good.
So the majority of it is yellow. That's
what we want. So I'm going to switch it
off and have a look at the skin tone. And
it looks great. It
looks absolutely fantastic.
So I'm very used to looking at a
vectorscope and knowing which bit is the
skin and whether it's sat on the skin
line or not. But this tool
has just made it really simple.
So watch this for a trick. If I go into
my light box, okay, we can actually do if
I leave. Oh, sorry. Let me
just check. I've got it on.
No, it's off at the moment. Switch it on.
And I get to my light box. And if I right
click and update all my thumbnails, that
utility tool is now on on all the clips.
So I can check here that our skin tones
are good. That one's good. Now, this
one's a little bit magenta. So I'll have
a look at that in a moment.
These two are good. This one's good. So
we've got consistent skin tone throughout
the whole program. It's fantastic. So I'm
going to come out of light box.
Let's address this shot then. Sorry, not
that one. This one. Let's come in here.
Obviously, you don't want to work in
timeline level because then you'd be
affecting all your program.
I'm going to come back to here. Let's
just come to our balance and exposure
here and have a look what's going on. So
I'm going to play with my offset here.
I'd normally do this on the panel. There
you go. Straight away. I've got that
looking much better. So I'm going to
switch the utility off.
And let's just check it
against the previous shot.
So this is such a great tool. I can't
believe how simple an idea this is. It's
just it's people like Stefan who just
come up with these ideas and I better
color this a long time. And this tool
would have been fantastic when I'm
starting out particularly as well.
So what can you do with it? You've got
other things in here. So this is
obviously our skin tone indicator.
Neutral to green is basically looking at
RGB values that are exactly the same and
it will make them go green. OK, so I need
to switch it on. Sorry. So there I can
see that this is neutral. OK, so good for
measuring blacks and whites.
So monochrome. This will actually switch
our image into monochrome momentarily.
This is great for setting contrast levels
and just having a look at what's going on
in the image without
saturation affecting it.
And the exposure heat map shows you
exposure. Now I'm very used to using
omniscope, so I do prefer using the
omniscope one to this one. I just haven't
got used to this one yet. I've only been
using it for a week. So it
may well work. I don't know.
I've been advised that the best use of
this tool is in Rec.709, not in DaVinci
wide gamut space. I'm yet to try that
out. But at the moment I'm in Rec.709
with this tool because obviously we're in
timeline level and my CST here is going
to 709 before the timeline level.
All right. Clip is pre timeline. So for
me, what's great about this tool is just
the speed at which I can check skin tone
and just check consistency across my
project. So to power scan a
whole project in Lightbox.
And I might want all my skin tone
slightly green, but as long as it's
consistent in the program, that's really
what I want. The ability to check more
than one face at a time on a frame is
fantastic as well without drawing
multiple power windows.
And just the speed at which it works is
fantastic. And you can make adjustments
to how it works as well. So if I go to my
skin tone indicator menu here, I can actually adjust the skin tone.
I can actually adjust the sensitivity
that it is expecting it to be sitting on
that line to how accurately it has to be
on that line. I've been using this in all
in default mode this week. This is the
first week that I've used it.
Show deviation so you can actually get
rid of the green magenta as well by
varying amounts. If you only wanted it to
show yellow, you want it to show green
magenta when it's off, then you can move
this deviation line here.
And if I switch on my neutral to green,
you can adjust the sensitivity of this
with this slider here. Okay. So how much
deviation you need between those RGB
values. So if you like the look of this
utility DCTL, you can download a free
trial version from mononodes.com.
I put the link in the description and
check out this video here where I use
another one of Stefan's DCTLs. It's the
color shift one. That's how I've got
these jumpers looking so
rich and nice and dense.
And I've also got a discount code in
there. So if you do decide to buy it,
there's a discount code in that link. I
just like to say thank you to Stefan for
coming up with these fantastic ideas for
DCTLs and making my life much simpler as
a colorist. Look after yourselves. I'll
see you in the next episode.